It's an unsettling visage straight out of World of Warcraft — the fierce masked figure sporting a bison-horned, feather-tasseled Native American headdress, angrily glaring from the cover of Choice of Weapon, the first album in five years from Goth-metal gods The Cult. But the artwork wasn't thrown together lightly, swears deep-thinking bandleader Ian Astbury, the man beneath this elaborate costume. Every single detail in the photograph is significant, he says, and stands as a metaphor for the spiritual-minded music inside.

The look, says the singer, "was inspired by a medicine bonnet I bought from a reservation in Canada in the '80s — it had a buffalo-skin hide, beadwork and ermine tails hanging off it, and I had it hanging in my home for many years. So with this record sleeve, I wanted to evoke an image of a spirit manifested as a human being, so I came up with this shamanic persona, with Native American influences, plus Bon religion, a pagan religion from Tibet that predates Buddhism."

In support of the Occupy movement, Astbury, 50, is also sporting an official Dead Rabbits shirt worn in Scorsese's Gangs of New York historical epic. His denim-draped black leather jacket, he adds, references "anarcho-punk, because that was a very important, influential period for me, back when I was into Crass and Poison Girls. And then my face is covered in solidarity with Arab Spring and other anonymous people — so many people are out there who wanna speak, but they're afraid to show their faces for fear of repercussion. So I think that's a real sign of the times."

Astbury has always been metaphysical. Native American mythology the Brit studied as a teen would find its way into Zenlike early Cult classics like 1984's Dreamtime and 1985's definitive Love (whose "She Sells Sanctuary" recently tolled through the years on a Budweiser Super Bowl ad).

Since then, he's had good reason to delve deeper. A few years ago, while playing soccer with longtime bandmate Billy Duffy on his all-star team Hollywood United, the pain finally registered: Years of stage-diving and motorcycle accidents had literally destroyed his hip, and a serious operation was needed.

Initially, Astbury recalls, "I went down. Hard. I was just physically worn, spiritually worn, done, finished." But he wound up in New York, couch-bound by day, hobbling to the Shambhala Meditation Center at night, where he sat quietly, listening to various transcendental teachers. "I went through almost a monastic period living there," he says of the period, which he began documenting in big-riffed, Bob-Rock-polished Choice of Weapon anthems that also ask big questions, like "The Wolf," "Life > Death," and "Elemental Light."

Astbury is concerned about climate change and the countless other crises currently facing humanity. "But I'd like to say Choice is more of an aware record, as opposed to a concerned one, because 'concerned' is close to panic," he says. Taking cues from philosophers like Joseph Campbell, Terence McKenna and Robert Thurman, he believes we're all caught up in "the show" — radio, TV, 24-hour news, social networking chatter.

"But there are individuals who aren't looking at the show anymore — they're just walking away," he swears. "And you know what the solution is? Shut the fuck up! Everyone just shut up for a second. Stop talking, start feeling. Accept where you're at, accept the situation and go inward. Travel inwards and see what comes up."

THE CULT's new album, "Choice Of Weapon", sold around 11,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 34 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was made available on May 22 via THE CULT's new label Cooking Vinyl.

THE CULT's new album, "Choice Of Weapon", sold around 11,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 34 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was made available on May 22 via THE CULT's new label Cooking Vinyl.

What can I say about this band live that already hasn’t been said a million times? They are amazing on stage 30 years after their debut.

Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy might be the most underrated British rock duo of all time, but they couldn’t care less. Touring in support of their masterful new album Choice of Weapon, The Cult reminded the sold-out crowd why they still matter—maybe even now more than ever.

Opening the show with the classic “Lil Devil,” Billy Duffy struck his signature pose holding up his beautiful Gretsch guitar while iconic frontman Ian Astbury came out dressed as unusually as any longtime fan of the band might expect. They sound better than ever and they had all the confidence in the world as San Francisco welcomed them back in fine form.

The new track “Honey From a Knife” sounds surprisingly fresh and is a true standout on the new record. Without going through every song of the set, the band pulled heavily from their early material, including several songs from the legendary Love record. They played four songs from the new release, including “The Wolf,” “For the Animals,” and what I consider their best new song, “Lucifer.”

Ian Astbury was as mysterious as ever. He would jump into short rants in between songs, but they all made sense when it came to the song to follow. It was sort of a spiritually-laced protest with a bit of cynicism thrown in to rile up the crowd. Whatever he was doing, it worked perfectly as minor interludes.

“She Sells Sanctuary” was the final song in the set list not counting the encore. As soon as the first few chords of the infamous song began, the crowd went berserk. It seemed like all of a sudden a every girl who loved this band in 1986 was suddenly drunk and dancing around wildly. The energy was enough to blow the roof off of the place.

But of course they can’t leave you on that note. Returning to the stage for a one song encore, the band came out and absolutely killed it with “Love Removal Machine”—an amazing ending to an absolutely incredible show.

I have two bits of advice for you. Number one, go see The Cult on this tour, as they will blow your mind. Number two, buy their new album and turn it up loud. It may be the best rock album we get this year.

Until the increasingly unlikely moment when Led Zeppelin reunites to record a new album and storm the world's stadiums, many of us will settle for the next-best thing—British-born Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy's The Cult. One of the few authentic hard-rock bands not settling for dour nü-metal posturing, The Cult has always wielded equal amounts of light and darkness, and Choice of Weapon's 10 varied tracks, produced by Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age) and Bob Rock (Metallica), stress both sides of the existential equation.

From the heavy ballad "Life > Death," with its uplifting piano-laced interlude, to the riff-packed and pounding froth of "For the Animals," to the highway-speeding rocker "Amnesia," this—Astbury and Duffy's first proper full-length since 2007's Born Into This—is some of the best material the longtime brothers-in-arms have ever done.

"Wilderness Now," in which Astbury celebrates being at once lost and found in a beautifully broken world ("I can't wake from this dream / Death walks right beside me / Light shines bright behind me"), is the dazzling centerpiece.

Some versions of Weapon come loaded with bonus tracks, featuring the "capsule" releases The Cult released online over the five-year break. If you haven't heard "Every Man and Woman Is a Star," with Astbury playing his shamanic frontman role to the hilt, Choice is your chance. A return to fine and ferocious form.

In 2002, Ian Astbury was invited by Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger to stand in for Jim Morrison in The Doors of the 21st Century tour.

Mr. Astbury took a little heat for taking part in a nostalgia tour, but the frontman for The Cult was a natural choice for the role -- not one that every rock star could pull off.

The singer certainly is one of the few to emerge from the post-punk scene with Morrison-style swagger. The British group, which formed in the early '80s and hit the airwaves with such singles as "She Sells Sanctuary," "Love Removal Machine" and "Rain," entered that New Wave era with a flair for old-school hard rock that would later inspire Jane's Addiction and Smashing Pumpkins.

The Cult released six albums before splitting in '95 and then re-formed in 1999. It has been on and off since then, with the two constants being Mr. Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy. This month, working with producers Chris Goss and Bob Rock, The Cult issued "Choice of Weapon," its ninth album and first in five years. True to form, it's another package of epic-sized guitar rock.

Now, The Cult has hit the road with Against Me!, fronted by Tom Gabel, who announced in a recent Rolling Stone interview that he was in the process of becoming transgendered. When he gets on the phone, a day or two after that news broke, Mr. Astbury laughs and says he's been asked about it constantly.

I remember first seeing you at the Syria Mosque Ballroom. How is it different for you touring now than it was in the '80s?

I'm probably more lucid now. Touring then was different because you really did play every show like it was gonna be your last show. Being earnest was dramatically important, so you put every molecule into it. Jumping off stages, destroying stages, very high energy in that way, and the actual performance was like a secondary consideration -- you know, getting all the words right. Now, you develop your craft more and learn to be economic and apply it where it's needed. Not to say you don't jump off stages, but I actually sing the songs all way through.

You've been together so long. What is the friendship like between you and Billy?

It's definitely more like family. We're quite different people. Sometimes we can completely polarize each other, but over the years we learned to respect each other's different styles. The Cult is a collaboration. We play different roles. Billy is the lead musician, so a lot of times we defer to the guitar.

I know labels might be for critics and geeks, but punk rock was happening when you formed -- did you identify with punk or metal?

I think in that period, there was a lot more solidarity between different tribal musical groups. I just saw a picture today of Lemmy with Sid and Nancy. Punks identified with Bob Marley. You see John Lydon with Peter Tosh. Just a sense of, like, youth culture -- all different facets of youth culture. There was more connectivity.

The Cult opened for the Clash, opened for New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus. We were playing with a lot of post-punk and post-modern bands. And then it evolved, whereby when we came to America, we opened Billy Idol on one tour and then we had Guns N' Roses on another tour, then we opened for Metallica. We kept going back between the post-punk and the hard rock. We were the first band to be played on both "120 Minutes" and "Headbangers Ball."

It was a blessing and a curse. Sometimes the post-modern community would say, "You're not erudite enough for us," and sometimes you would get the hard rock community going, 'Well you're actually too arty for us.' We cut such a broad interest in music and loved all of it.

Jane's Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins and Seattle grunge -- did you feel like they owed a debt to the Cult?

Possibly we were plugged into a similar things. We can sit down and talk to Billy Corgan about similar influences. It just goes through a different filter.

You had said a few years ago you wouldn't do any more albums -- what made you change your mind?

I did. I was the holdout. We were looking at the album being kind of cannibalized, going up on iTunes, individual tracks at 99 cents, pick and choose, chop it up, make it whatever you want. Then it was 'Whoa, whoa, wait, now the audience is driving the creative choices.' Also, the critical system. If you didn't connect with the critical system in the initial stages of an album coming out, if there's no gestation period, where an album can grow, you're pretty much judged on your first release, usually a single track. If that wasn't deemed to be palatable you were thrown to the back of the queue or thrown to the great unknown. Doesn't matter that you spent a year and a half making an album. We said, 'Let's reclaim the power for ourselves.'

This sounds like it could be one of your most intense albums. How would you say it fits in with the other stuff you've done?

Working with Chris initially, he kind of came in the room and said, 'You guys have some bad habits. Let's break away from some of these of things, let's get more esoteric. Let's push it a little bit further. Let's try to find some more textures and colors and tonalities.' He plays a Telecaster through a Supro amp, he has his own voice and he kind of led the way. We found ourselves in territory that was kind of unfamiliar, yet familiar at the same time. We found we had much more of a broader scope than we thought we had.

What influenced you lyrically on this album?

Travel, experience, so many things. I tend to gravitate toward the same source material: Tibetan Buddhism, indigenous Native American philosophy, certain films by Kurosawa, Coppola, Kubrick, We're not making Michael Bay movies. We're not making 'Transformers.' In some places, we're trying to make 'Barry Linden,' we're trying to make 'Taxi Driver,' and get it to be that graphic, that authentic. That's what's reflected in this record.

con't from above.."For the Animals" is one of the more standout tracks. What is that about?

Outsiders, free thinkers, individuals, Tom Gable -- not Pitchfork media. Not for the Pavlovian. For people who live their lives with their hearts on their sleeves, that aren't indoctrinated into any one way of thinking, feeling. Not for the erudite, self-imposed cultural advocates of what's right, what's wrong, what's stylish, what's not. Those kind of pious cultural commentators who throw their critiques from their Ivory Tower, yet when confronted they crumble. When asked for their credentials, they can provide none. Quite happy to accept their sponsorship from American Express, or whoever, Snapple, yet still pontificate about integrity. Rolling Stone is basically an advertisement for Snapple, now, yet they wax lyrical about politics. Shut up, get on the street, put your money where your mouth is. We need everybody in the culture now. We don't need to be stabbing each other in the back, putting each other down. We need that community to come back.

I think [Pitchfork] crossed the line with me when they critiqued Lou Reed, with the 'Lulu' record. That guy gets a hall pass. He's one of your tribal elders. You hope, you pray, you have an ounce of what he's had in his life as a creative individual. You don't take that guy down.

Well, sometimes things are appreciated long after their time ... like the Velvet Underground.

Sold 40,000 copies when it first came out. Now everyone's a connoisseur of Velvets and Krautrock and punk rock. Don't talk to me about punk rock. I was there. The point being, I don't know what it is, just that fear in the culture where people feel they have to define everything. And comment with this really acerbic, brutal, intellectual bullying.

Well, you came up with the British press, and they were always like that.

They went after me, they went after me with knives. They thought I was a pretty kid. They thought I was fluff. They didn't see me change my mother's bed sheets when I was 15 years old and she was dying of cancer, cleaning the bathroom after my mother had been in there being sick. So, take me on, I'll take anyone on.

The Doors tour. When you look back on that, are you glad you did it?

Yeah, I'm thrilled I did it. It's a feather in my cap for me. I can look at myself and say "I did that, I had the [guts] to do that." 'Cause I knew once I was offered it, this ain't gonna be an easy ride. I'm going to get battered. So many artists go out when singers passed away and people have been beating them brutally. When it was offered to me, I thought I can do this, or I cannot do this. If I don't do it, I'll be kicking myself, wondering what it would have been like. So I jumped in with both feet and it took me a while to get acclimated.

Ray and Robbie, they're very hard taskmasters. They demanded perfection -- worst of all, without even saying. It was intimated. I knew when it wasn't connecting, because they just let me know. When it did connect, then you got the nod, and getting the nod from Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger, as a student, being recognized by my patriarchs, my mentors ... It was a job that had to be done. Now that I've gone through it, I'm so glad I did it. I was privileged to be on the inside of perhaps the greatest American rock 'n' roll band of all time.

Finally, you're about to go on tour with Against Me! How did you react to the news about Tom Gabel?

I've never met Tom formally. I obviously know his music. My friend sent me the article from Rolling Stone. I looked at it, and said, "whatever, fine." I'm completely supportive of Tom/Laura, however he or she wants to be referred to, absolutely. I respect his choice. I think he's incredibly courageous

The Cult, Against Me! at the Ogden Theatre, 5/30/12 (photos and review) By Billy Thieme | May 31st, 2012 | No Comments »

Ian Astbury has has always been a little pretentious. He’s talented, sexy, market savvy and golden-tongued, sure, but he’s a narcissist. His performance Wednesday night with the Cult at the Ogden Theatre almost changed my mind. Almost.

After an abnormally long wait between bands in front of a well-packed house, the Cult finally took the stage and immediately exploded with “Lil’ Devil.” The crowd responded with pent-up enthusiasm. Astbury and company followed with “Honey From A Knife” and carried on with a 90 minute set that alternated classics with cuts from their new record.

After “Rain,” “Lucifer” and “Nirvana,” Astbury interjected the flow with a proclamation: “I think we’re on our way back into the world — so just fuckin’ watch out, you young people!” Everything the band had done so far led me to believe they might just pull that off with this tour, which continues across the globe through September. And then, just when I thought that the band had actually grown into Astbury’s ego, he corrected me.

“Musicians have become the valets and prostitutes of the entertainment industry,” he remarked, after bitching about promoter AEG’s need to provide carpeting for the stage — and the prima donna was back. Fortunately, the band has grown enough in both style and stature to fill Astbury’s egotistical footprints. Guitarist Billy Duffy remains one of music’s underrated hard rock players — his performance proved that he deserves guitar god status, and the rest of the band followed suit.

Through “Fire Woman,” “She Sells Sanctuary” and the closer “Love Removal Machine,” the band members showed why they’ve long been a force in rock, despite Astbury’s narcissism.

Openers Against Me! played a nonstop set of anthemic punk to warm up the crowd before the headliners. Even with the polarizing recent news about lead singer Tom Gabel’s decision to come out as transgender — he’s now Laura Jane Grace — the crowd rocked as hard as ever to every song in the band’s perfectly edgy, cathartic performance.

Jock Matt O'Shaughnessy talks with one of THE CULT's original serving members and guitarist, Billy Duffy, this Friday, June 1st at 8:10 PM, EST exclusively on 1460 AM and worldwide at WVOX.com.

Duffy will give WVOX a look into the making of The Cult's latest release, Choice Of Weapon, and the bands upcoming return to New York City's Terminal 5 on June 8th and more. Fans can also listen to win tickets to The Cult's Terminal 5 appearance on WVOX. Metal Mayhem can now be viewed on live webcam at WVOX.com and airs every Friday from 6 -10 PM.

The Cult released their first new album in five years, Choice Of Weapon, on May 21st internationally, and on May 22nd in North America, on Cooking Vinyl worldwide.

Choice of Weapon has come out of the gate strong, debuting on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart at #34. The album made other impressive Billboard chart numbers as well - #3 on the Hard Rock chart, #15 on the Rock chart, and #7 on the Indie Albums chart. Choice Of Weapon made impressive entries on the UK charts (#20) as well as the Canadian national charts (#15).

[Q&A] The Cult's Billy Duffy on hard rock, post-punk, getting good-looking girlfriends, and, uh, taking a lot of drugs at the time

Let's face it-- nowadays we have popular musicians or buzzworthy bands but we don't really have rock stars. There are still some left, though, walking the earth as proof of the existence of this once-glorious race of human. What's so awesome about The Cult, though, is that they still manage to seem current and awesome, even as they enter what is now their fourth decade of sheer bloody rock. Billy Duffy is one of rock's most iconic guitar gods: besides his iconic stage presence, his deft balance between stadium stomp, new wave hookiness and sheer experimental weirdness has always perfectly buoyed the band's pure rock heft. I caught up with the always-fascinating Duffy by phone at his California home, as the band was in rehearsals for their current U.S. tour, their first in years, in support of this month's excellent new long-player, Choice of Weapon (Cooking Vinyl), produced by both Chris Goss and the venerable Bob Rock (I also talked -- for a very long time -- with Cult singer Ian Astbury, and you can read that conversation as well). The band hits Boston's House of Blues on Tuesday, June 5th, and we featured the band in this week's print issue, but there was far too much that hit the editing floor-- here's the rest of my conversation with a true rock legend.

Have you guys started the tour yet?

Not yet.

Yeah, cuz I saw you guys briefly at South By Southwest...

No, the tour starts in May when the album comes out. Fortunately for us, the album was originally slated for April and then we kind of couldn’t get it together. It had to do with the mastering and the artwork and all that kind of stuff. The album is actually done but we missed a deadline-- which is kind of a drag because now we’re releasing the record at the same time as Slash and all that.

How was the approach on this record different than on Born Into This?

With Born Into This, the decision was made to capture what we had really quickly. We got Youth as a producer at the last minute and we had 20 days in England to record it, and when we got out of the studio we went out on the road the next day and heard the mixes while we were on tour. Which was interesting after an hour and a half of live rock and roll music.

But in some ways it’s better than the days of sitting around endlessly in a control room while a guy mixes your album, and the days of that are kind of long gone. So there isn’t necessarily wrong with doing it that way, but it was quick, and we wanted something else this time. Choice of Weapon had a longer gestation to it, and it’s given the band more of a cohesion that shows up in the album. I mean, these guys have taken some punches, we’ve played around a hundred shows a year, and it shows, whereas with Born Into This it wasn’t really like that.

With this one, we had two producers, and I think you know, in a way, making the album over a period of two years sporadically has allowed us to work out a lot of the kinks.

It seems like whenever you guys do something new, it’s either compared to Electric, or to the Love album, in terms of sound.

I agree that it is successful in defining the yardstick, like how the Love album kind of broke the band but not in the States, it broke us in Canada, the UK, etc. In the States, we were known by the Love tour, and a lot of bands that got bigger later were influenced by that period. Like the Seattle bands, I think the show we did with the Divinyls at the Paramount in Seattle in ‘86 was a who’s who of the grunge movement. I mean, all the guys from Mother Love Bone and Alice In Chains were there, and that album was influential but it didn’t have mainstream success.

The Love album in the States was a college radio album, and then Electric came out and that marked the shift to straight up rock and roll, which was in some ways personified by the success of Guns N’ Roses, who opened for us on that tour on our request. Ian found them, we went to see them in London, and we were like “We’ve got to get them on the road with us.” I think those two albums were milestones for us, and then Sonic Temple was the most commercially successful, and then the subsequent tour, when we were out for a year solid, was the year that most people saw us on.

The thing with the Cult is that we’re kind of journeyman. Ian and I are friends, rock fans, punk rock fans, who used the Cult and our relationships to experiment. In a way, we’re kind of doing what we were doing in 1986, in a sense.

New wave and alternative were, so often, alternatives to rock; you guys always kept that connection to rock and bridged a certain gap.

Well, we certainly weren’t metal, the Cult aren’t metal, we’re a heavy rock band and share a lot of the same influences as a band like Metallica but our journey led us to punk and new wave and post-punk. But you’re right, and that’s kind of like the Seattle thing, those bands kind of were able to look to the Cult and go “Ok, cool, it’s British new wave but it’s rock.” I know Jane’s Addiction were going around that time, because new wave was very popular in LA and we’d come into town and play and I think they opened for us in ‘84, at least according to Perry Farrell. I think, I can’t remember, to be honest, I was, uh... I was taking a lot of drugs at the time.

Hah! It seems like in a lot of ways the key to your sound is all the space you leave, sonically. It kind of seems how you developed your signature sound.

The evolutionary trail, you can kind of hear it from the pre-Love album, especially in Dreamtime. Like songs like “Spiritwalker” or “Go West”, they were the songs that Cult fans were wild for, and they weren’t known in the States. And that stuff was like, “How can I make my own mark?” At the time, there were all these great guys, like Marco Pirroni in the Banshees, and after seeing the Stray Cats doing that punkabilly thing, I was fishing around for my own sound. Like Geordie from Killing Joke too. These were all influential people who often don’t get the credit. And Charlie Burchill from Simple Minds. Everybody was searching for a sound that wasn’t like the Pistols and the Clash. They were great and all, but how do we make our own sound that isn’t like third rate punk?

I sold everything to get the Gretsch White Falcon, I made myself penniless, when I joined the band before I was in the Cult. That was our sound, we had Gretsches and we were kind of going for that cinematic Ennio Morricone guitar twang with doses of Roxy Music and Bowie, that whole melodic glam rock hooks thing. That was kind of the gene pool, with tribal beats and whatever. That’s kind of where the Gretsch started and that sound led what I was doing. The real moment was I was playing at a soundtrack with this band and I did Jimi Hendrix, badly, with a fuzz pedal or whatever, and it stuck in Ian’s mind. A couple of years later when I was fired from Theater of Hate for having opinions several levels above my pay grade-- and rightly so, because I still love that band, and everyone should listen to Theater of Hate, great band-- but I was fired for being a mutinous dog, and Ian found me in London and searched me out and referenced that moment when he heard me play the Gretsch. And you know, this was post-punk, we don’t play Hendrix!

But Ian loved all that, because he lived in America and Canada and he missed the initial thing with punk, and had been exposed to FM radio. I hadn’t because that didn’t exist in the UK. And from that point on, we were just trying to do crazy stuff, like “Phoenix” or “Love” from the Love album, like if the Stooges were playing a Hendrix song, or if the Sex Pistols were playing a Free or Bad Company song, what would it sound like?

Right-- you guys had a lot of the properties of post-punk but weren’t afraid of hard rock and classic rock.

We kind of just stepped against all of that-- good’s good, as far as we were concerned. I wasn’t that into thirty-seven minute songs about castles and wearing a cape or anything, so that wasn’t exciting. But I think in some ways the baby got thrown out with the bathwater in a very Orwellian way with punk. I mean, all the original punk bands loved Mott the Hoople and the Stooges and Roxy Music and Queen. They all had their guilty pleasures but they were also doing something very important, and being around it really did change my life for the better.

But I try with the guitars. I’m never gonna be a shredder, even though I really really practiced a lot at some point and I got a bit fast. But I always want to play cool guitars, I play Les Pauls and Gretschs and they aren’t easy to shred on. I guess someone like Brian Setzer kind of shreds with a Gretsch in his hand, but he’s had that guitar in his hand since he was three of age. But yeah, I don’t want to play a horrible pointed lime-green monstrosity guitar, something that looks like a child’s toy. I got into guitar to get good looking girlfriends and have a laugh, you know?

There’s a lot of restraint in the Cult’s music-- it kind of makes the music sound larger.

Yeah, we’ve definitely-- we’re not afraid to be big. If every song is a visual thing, some of them are landscapes, some of them are intimate portraits, some of them are charcoal sketches. There’s a lot of fear of musicians not to attempt stuff and we’ve really tried to put our own character in the music. Ok, so a song might channel some of the best elements of Zeppelin or AC/DC, but it’s also about putting ourselves in there too. We probably do wear our heart on our sleeves, a lot-- I wouldn’t consider us clever, and I know a lot of guys who are a lot more studious about how their stuff will be received. We tend to be too caught up in having a good time and being free spirited, which is what I thought it was all about really, not sitting home studying your next maneuver. Life is too short for that, but I do know guys who agonize over what shirt to wear because that’s going to make a statement. And we did do that ourselves, like Ian going out in flares and growing long hair ruffled feathers in the UK, especially journalists who thought they owned punk and thought they had the license on being important. We opened a door to another room of possibilities that those people couldn’t control, and they got really frustrated because we sold tons of records and the media response to the Cult in the 80s was mostly negative. But the more they did that, in a sense, the bigger we got.

A lot of people in the States got exposed to the Cult on the Electric album, which was a certain period in our lives where we were being produced, or as Rick Rubin said, “reduced”-- that was him, George Drakoulias and Andy Wallace, the holy trinity there. We were in Electric Ladyland where AC/DC had done Back In Black, and Beastie Boys and Public Enemy were happening, Def Jam was cooking.

We literally came into the studio once and the Beastie Boys were jamming on our equipment, and it was like three little chimps rocking out. We were like “What’s going on, Rick?” It was brilliant, a snapshot of a moment of time. And obviously all of us were massively influenced by AC/DC. I saw them in 1979, and I used to see Bon Scott out and about in London. I think I might have seen him the night he died-- I have a feeling, this recollection, I was out seeing this band that I subsequently joined, and I went to this show and I believe I saw Bon Scott with his tour manager out on a Monday night, doing the nightculb crawl, hitting the bars, having a few cocktails. I think it was true, I was definitely in London then.

But I digress... But yeah, the Love album had been an underground success in America, but we’d been on the road and we wanted to rock the sound up and beef it up. Towards the end of the Love album, the songs had gotten heavier and we couldn’t quite capture that balance in the UK with the same producer.

AC/DC also employed restraint to great effect.

Oh yeah, AC/DC were definitely all about less is more. But yeah, Electric was the result of the Cult coming to America and spending time here, meeting American bands and fans, listening to American radio, and not being closed off. A lot of British bands are closed off about that sort of thing, and then they complain about how they never make it in America. Ian already had a disposition towards America from having grown up in Canada. But we were getting slaughtered in the music press in England, and we observed that historically a lot of bands succeeded going west, U2 had just done it, and so we focused on America. And Electric was the result of that, it ended up that way. We needed a template for common ground for Rick Rubin and it was early Zeppelin, early AC/DC.

Do you find it a challege fitting in with modern rock nowadays?

The challenge is always having a blank piece of paper and coming up with something. Ian and I always write riffs-- it’s not like I sit down at a desk and write guitar riffs for ten hours, I just have stuff collected and he has stuff collected and we marry the two. And we like to reflect what’s going on around us, we don’t live in a bunker, but we don’t want to copy-- I mean, Ian’s a massive Bowie fan, and like him he feeds on inspiration as a fuel but he also has enough of a sense of himself and that inner self-confidence. And there’s eras where people are aware of what’s going on, but it’s not like in the 90s we used samplers and drum machines or anything. And one thing we never talk about, which is a massive influence, the elephant in the room, is the Doors. I had L.A. Woman on vinyl when I was a kid, and “Riders on hte Storm” is one of my favorite songs of all time, ever. Those songs and that dark sinister brooding kind of shit is as important as AC/DC; they both inhabit my iPod! And obviously Ian wound up singing for the Doors, which was funny and ironic. But you know, the Doors were a massive influence on bands in the UK: Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, The Cult.

The Doors were also a big goth influence as well, like anyone making music that is at all dark winds up owing them.

People started listening to Doors albums in the post-punk days: you couldn’t argue with AC/DC, and similarly, bands like the Doors had a timeless quality that you could revisit. And that’s kind of being said about The Cult. I remember in the 90s Howard Stern played the Love album, during the grunge period. And they listened and they were all like “That’s pretty good, what’s that?” And he was like “That’s the Cult, that album came out ten years ago.” And to me, we’re not the band that’s ever gonna win a Grammy or win an award or anything-- we don’t really hang out with the right people. We’re actually kind of like a cult: we exist but we’ve never had any recognition from the music business. It’s always been the best kind of recognition, other musicians saying great things and being influenced.

The Cult’s Choice of Weapon (Cooking Vinyl) has come out of the gate strong, debuting on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart at #34. The album made other impressive Billboard chart numbers as well – #3 on the Hard Rock chart, #15 on the Rock chart, and #7 on the Indie Albums chart. Choice of Weapon made impressive entries on the UK charts (#20) as well as the Canadian national charts (#15). The album was written by vocalist Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, and produced by Bob Rock and Chris Goss.

In addition, Choice of Weapon has been heartily championed by the press, the consensus being that it is The Cult’s best album in years. The UK’s Mojo gave it a Five Star review, Entertainment Weekly tagged it with an A-, Magnet said it was “as epic and compelling as nearly anything in The Cult’s ’80s back catalogue,” The UK’s Q magazine called it “brilliant,” the Phoenix New Times wrote “everything clicks,” and MSN stated simply that it was “their best album in 20 years.”

Beyond the accolades, Choice of Weapon is being recognized for its message of survival in our ever-changing society. In its review, Classic Rock talked about the album being “a reflective, powerful and dark work drenched in the band’s signature blend of mystical poetry and melodic, dense guitars,” while the UK’s Louder Than War went straight to the heart of the matter: ”A ballsy f*ck-you record for ballsy f*ck-you times.”

As one rock critic put it, “‘Choice of Weapon’ is a citadel of rock refinement for a fragile period in music appreciation that has all but forgotten what a monster rock album sounds like. ’Love’ begets “Electric’ begets a latter-day rare diamond cut from artists who care more about the edges and grooves than the luster.”

The Cult is supporting Choice of Weapon with a global tour which kicked off May 25 with a 22-date trek in the U.S.- Against Me! and The Icarus Line support.